It appears that this week is one of the most important in the world of productivity software. The previous Tuesday Apple revealed major changes to the iWork suite and we’ll close the week with the Microsoft announcements for its suite of applications which include Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Teams, and Word.
On the 5th of October, Microsoft will release the non-subscription version of Office 365. The Student and Home versions cost $150, while the business and Home versions cost $250. It also comes with Outlook and, as per Microsoft’s Microsoft 365 blog, “rights to use the apps for business purposes.”
The subscription suite, Microsoft 365 Personal, is $7 per month, or 70$ per year. Microsoft 365 Family costs $10 per month or $70 annually. Family edition (for between six and six users) is $10 per month and $100 for the year.
To to make Office 2021 even more enticing, Microsoft has updated the suite with features that were previously exclusive only to Microsoft 365. Alongside the features that were previously made public as well as:
- XLOOKUP dynamic arrays along with an XMATCH tool in Excel.
- Immersive Reader advanced colors and natural-sounding voice using Read Aloud using Word.
- The ability to create an animated GIF from a slide display within PowerPoint.
- Performance improvements across all applications.
Microsoft has also announced that collaboration capabilities that are part of Microsoft 365 are now available in Office 2021. That means you’ll be able to perform “real-time” co-authoring of documents. Additionally, Microsoft is now including its Teams video conferencing software that was not available in earlier versions.
The only requirement is you have a Mac that runs one of the 3 most current versions of macOS However, Microsoft states that OneDrive is required in order to utilize the features for collaboration. Each account is granted five GB of free OneDrive storage.
There is also the possibility to purchase a 100GB OneDrive plan for $2/month to Office 2021 subscribers. Microsoft 365 subscribers receive the capacity of 1TB per account.